And Dream of Sheep
by Rahmi
Summary: Ben's always had weird dreams.


_Written for the telepathy square of the H/C bingo challenge; pre-cog is considered telepathy (I looked it up!), so I decided to do somethind with all of those out of canon episodes. I don't think there are any warnings in this one, but feel free to drop me a line if you find something you think should be warned for._

* * *

Ben's always had weird dreams. There's the ones where he's running in a forest and he can't find his way out, or the ones where he shows up at school and he's naked or there's a test he forgot to study for, or even the ones where he transforms into an alien and just gets stuck that way.

Then there's the weirder ones.

Ben wakes up when he's ten and rolls onto his stomach to throw one of his action figures at the Freak's head. He manages to peg her in the forehead, which leaves a red mark that might bruise if Ben's lucky, and Gwen sits straight up in her bunk, flailing. She knocks the top of her head into the bottom of his bed while she's doing it, too, which is even more awesome than just hitting her in the face with his toy.

Ben snickers.

"Ben!" Gwen explodes.

"That's for stealing the Omnitrix," he says fuzzily.

"What are you even talking about, loser?"

Ben leans over the side of his bed and sticks his tongue out at his cousin. "You stole the Omnitrix!"

In retrospect, Ben probably shouldn't have leaned over the side of the bed. Gwen hits him on the forehead with one of her palms. She has to have some kind of weird girl power or something because it hurts worse than getting thrown around by stupid Kevin 11.

"Ow!" he objects, rubbing his forehead. "What was that for?"

"For hitting me with your dumb doll!"

Ben does not have dolls! "It's not a doll, it's a Sumo Slammers first edition action figure!" And he'd just thrown it at his cousin. Ben dangles further over the side of his bed and anxiously looks for it. It would be just his luck if the Dweeb's big, hard head had broken his toy.

"Whatever!" Gwen throws her pillow at his head and flops back down into bed to throw her hands over her eyes. "What is _wrong_ with you, freakazoid?"

"I told you," Ben says, letting his arms dangle above his head so he can pull faces at Gwen. "You stole the Omnitrix."

"Are you _crazy_?" Gwen yells. "It's right there on your stupid wrist, stupid! Nobody can get it off!"

Well, yeah. But in his dream, she'd stolen it and she'd known how to use it almost better than he did. That totally deserved a smack to the head. No way was Ben going to let that slide. "You were thinking about stealing it," he finally says with a sniff.

"Why would I want to steal your lame toy, dweeb?"

"It's not lame, it's _awesome._" Ben uses one hand to snub his nose and crosses his eyes at Gwen. "You're never going to know how awesome it is, though. Sucks to be you."

"Gross, Ben! I can see your boogers!" Gwen throws his action figure back at him; he's not a girl, though, so he catches it before it can hit him in the face. There's a reason he's the best catcher on his baseball team, nyah.

"Hey, thanks for giving this back," he says and flips himself back up onto his bed. As an afterthought, he digs one finger into his nose. He's not going to waste perfectly good ammunition.

His Sumo Slammers toy is _chipped_ on one side now. Ben definitely should have gone for the booger approach first.

So there was that time.

Then there was the time right after he saw himself, in the _future_. He'd been buff and tall and totally awesome, once he got over that whole being a jerk thing, so Ben didn't really mind when he dreamed about it again.

"I'm gonna have a kid in the future," he tells Gwen matter of factly.

Gwen snorts and turns a page in her book. "Nobody's gonna want to have kids with someone like you, dork. You still think girls have cooties."

"They do," Ben points out. "You get your girl cooties all over the bathroom every time you leave that lip-stuff on the counter."

"It's called lip balm, Ben, and way to prove my point."

Ben just shrugs. He's going to dump the rest of his water bottle on Gwen in about three minutes anyway, so it's not like he needs the last word right now. "Whatever," he says, "All I'm saying is that when I'm, like, old and wrinkly, I'm going to have a kid."

"Old and wrinkly?"

"Like, thirty, at least," Ben says. He can remember how it felt to be that dream Ben; he'd been _old_, but he hadn't really felt old. Not until he woke up in bed.

Gwen looks up from the book, frowning, and says, "Wow. You live that long? I'm amazed. I figured evolution would take care of your stupid."

Ah, that's no fair. "You can't use words I don't know the meaning of," Ben sulks.

"Did you pay any attention in school, Ben?"

"Nope."

"Figures."

"Yep," Ben grins. "Anyway, my kid's gonna be totally awesome."

His cousin sighs deeply and throws her book into her lap. "Seriously, Ben, what the heck are you talking about? I don't speak doofus."

"Well I don't speak _freak_," Ben returns. He crosses his arms, tapping his water bottle against one arm, before he explodes, "It was totally cool! My son had an Omnitrix too and we fought Kevin together!"

He doesn't mention that other kid. He's not sure what the other Ben really thought about him; it just kind of felt sad when Ben was that other Ben, sad and mad, too. Ben figures it's something he doesn't really need to know when he's ten, so he doesn't try too hard to make sense of it or anything.

There's a kick-butt kid in the future. That's all that matters, right?

"You really need to stop eating a bunch of sugar before bedtime," Gwen says. She picks her book up again and goes back to ignoring him, which is when Ben decides it's the perfect time to make use of the water bottle.

He twists the cap off the water bottle and makes a big show of drinking it, stepping closer to Gwen casually. She keeps reading her book instead of looking up at him, the idiot, and the Omnitrix is glowing a cheery, ready green. Stinkfly's on standby for right after this prank.

"Hey, Gwen," Ben says.

Gwen squints up at him. "What, dweeb?"

"Nothing." Ben gleefully dumps all of the water over the top of her head.

Gwen's frozen for just long enough that Ben slaps the Omnitrix and is up into the air before she jumps to her feet. "You're _dead_, Benjamin Kirby!" she yells up at him.

Ben just laughs.

He's not laughing when he has the next dream. Everyone knows who he is in it, and it's _horrible._ Yeah, lots of people like him and stuff, but he also gets mobbed by girl cooties all the time and he never gets to do anything without people staring at him. He thought he wanted people to know who he was.

Apparently, he was really, really wrong.

"I think I want to take the Omnitrix off," Ben tells Gwen that morning.

It's still mostly dark outside, but this is the last night they're spending in the Rustbucket, even if they've decided to sleep outside instead. Summer's almost over.

He can't see her well enough to know for sure, but Ben hears Gwen stir in her sleeping bag. "Why?"

Ben hasn't ever _really_ told Gwen about the dreams. They're weird, for one, and he's pretty sure she'd just make fun of him or tell him he was developing magic or something stupid like that. He doesn't have whatever it is that makes it so Gwen can do magic.

He had a dream once that he was the one with the girl-pink powers, but he woke up from that dream pretty quick. He does not like to think about it.

"I just think it'd be better," Ben says, shrugging.

"Why?" she asks.

"No reason." He tucks his hands under his head and stares straight up into the gray morning.

There's a second of silence before Gwen starts rustling around in her sleeping bag. Ben hears the zipper scrape down even over the sounds of Grandpa Max's snoring, then Gwen's suddenly standing over him with her bag thrown over her shoulder. "Scoot over," Gwen says.

Ben makes a face because, gross, cousin cooties, but he scoots over in his sleeping bag. Gwen tosses her bag on top of his and then crawls into the sleeping bag with him. "I'm gonna have boy cooties in the morning," she huffs.

"Hey, your choice."

"I know. Shut up." She wiggles and Ben has to jerk back against the zipper because she's trying to elbow him in the face, the clumsy dweeb. Geez. "Now what were you saying about the Omnitrix?"

He mimes zipping his mouth shut, purposely shoving his elbow against her cheek, and grins up at the sky.

"Ben!" she huffs. "Come on, what were you talking about?"

"You told me to shut up."

"Well, un-shut up!"

It's Ben's turn to wiggle. He manages to get his elbow back under the sleeping bag because it's _cold_ out here, and if that means he's kind of cuddling with Gwen, well, that's not his fault. "I just think it'll be better," he says.

"You love being a hero," Gwen says. She sounds confused and her breath smells like _death_ when she breathes in his face, but Ben keeps that to himself. For now.

"You gotta know when it's time to go Hero and when it's time to put it away," Ben says. He tries to sound smart when he says it even though he's not sure if it's the right thing to do.

He just knows he doesn't want to turn out like that other Ben. He wants to be able to go to school and play soccer without people staring at him. And he doesn't ever want Carl and Sandra to get hurt because of him.

Gwen's hand curls around his in the space between their bodies. "Ben," she says, "If that's what you want, I don't think anyone's gonna argue that you've earned it. But you need to be sure."

Ben swallows hard. "Geez, Gwen," he says, squeezing her hand, "There's no need to get so girlie on me."

"Ben."

"I really do want it off," he mutters. "I've kind of forgotten what my wrist looks like." His voice cracks when he tries to make the joke and he's got something in his eyes all of a sudden. He tries to scrub it out without Gwen knowing, but that's kind of hard when they're sharing a sleeping bag.

She doesn't say anything about it, though. She just leans her head against his and says, "Okay. I'll look in my spellbook to see if there's anything I can find."

"Thanks, freak."

"Don't mention it, megadweeb."

But all of his other dreams turn out to not be anywhere as weird as the last dream Ben has before he takes finally gets the Omnitrix off. Ben stares up at his ceiling for a really long time before he turns over and gropes for his phone. It's the middle of the night and everyone's going to be sleeping, but nobody's ever accused Ben of being polite.

It rings a bunch of times before someone finally picks it up.

"It's the middle of the night," Gwen groans.

"Do you think Kevin can change?" Ben asks.

There's a long pause on the phone. Ben listens to Gwen breathe like a heavy creeper for what feels like forever. "Well?" he demands.

"Ben," Gwen says, "What is _wrong with you_? It's the middle of the night! My parents are going to be furious!"

"The sooner you answer the question, big butt, the sooner I'll get off the phone." Ben blinks at the ceiling and tries to hold on to the dream, even if it is slipping sort of sideways. There had been some kind of really embarrassing kiss involved, he thinks, and there'd been two of him, which was... weirder than normal.

Usually, there's only one of him; mostly Ben just sits in the other him's body and goes along for the ride. So that was weird, but.

There'd also been a Kevin who didn't try to hurt him and a Gwen that was kind of cute, for a megafreak cousin. It's the Kevin thing that's really throwing him.

"I do not have a big butt," Gwen snaps.

"Sure you do," he says, "And it's gonna be even bigger when you grow up."

Gwen sighs into the phone. "You are so obnoxious," she says. "Now what's this about Kevin?"

She still sounds sleepy and kind of useless, but she's the best he's got. He'd rather die than admit it to her, but Gwen's the one he counts on to figure it out when he's being stupid.

And trusting Kevin 11? That definitely sounds stupid to him.

"Do you think he can change?" Ben asks again.

"Where did this even come from, Ben? You didn't see Kevin again, did you? If he's out of the Null Void, we've gotta tell Grandpa Max."

Ben makes a big show out of looking at his hands and his feet, even if Gwen can't see him doing it. He figures she'll just be imagining it anyway. "Still got all my limbs," he says into the phone, "So I'm pretty sure I haven't seen Kevin."

"Then why would you call me at," Ben listens to her rustle around for a second, obviously looking for a clock, before she says, "Two o'clock in the _morning_, really? I ask again, what is _wrong_ with you, megadweeb?"

"Gwen. Come on, I need you to answer the question," Ben says helplessly. He can't get the image of Kevin having the _gall_ to kiss Gwen out of his mind; he knows he wasn't meant to see it, but that's what you _get_ for sneaking kisses on a spaceship. His future self had just rolled his eyes, though, like he was a total idiot and didn't understand that Kevin 11 could really _hurt Gwen._ Heck, Ben can't believe Gwen would be stupid enough to fall for someone like that.

But maybe, maybe even his Gwen knows something he doesn't.

"I don't know, Ben," she says quietly. "I mean. He's tried to kill you before. I don't know if someone like that can change."

"But would you give him a chance?" he asks, "If, I don't know, he said he was sorry or something? Would you trust him?"

"You already gave him a second chance, though," Gwen says, blowing a breath into the phone. "Let me reiterate, Ben: _he's tried to kill you._ Why would you want to give him another chance?"

"We're not talking about me. Would you give him another chance?"

She pauses. Ben swallows and strains his ears. "If he said he was sorry," Gwen says after a moment, "And someone was there to kick his butt in case he relapsed, I might. Maybe."

"Oh," Ben says.

"But I'd kick his butt myself if he hurt you again," Gwen says in his ear, suddenly fierce. "I'm the only one who gets to beat you up, doofus."

Oh. He kind of wishes his cousin was here right now, so he could, like, fart on her or something. This was starting to get way too mushy for him. Yeah, he'd die for Gwen, but he's not sure he's comfortable with her, you know, being willing to do the same for him.

Plus, she'd _kissed Kevin_ in his dream. He totally needs to get back at her for making his eyes bleed.

"Okay," Ben manages. "I'm gonna go back to sleep now, I guess. Thanks, freak."

There's a long pause. "I don't understand you sometimes," Gwen finally says. "You are so weird."

Ben thinks about black aliens with little white marks like stars in their bodies and being able to make the Omnitrix do what he wants just by _touching_ it, and he thinks about Gwen's hair being stupid and long instead of stupid and short. He thinks about waking up in his bed with his cheeks on fire.

And he thinks about Kevin 11 fighting a total badass monster to save them all.

It's gotta all be a dream, he thinks, and wipes at his cheek again. His fingers come away kind of sticky, the same as the last time he did it, kind of like what happens when Aunt Camille kisses his cheek. Ben rubs his fingers together before he wipes them on his sheets.

Gotta be a dream.

"I'm sorry I woke you up," he tells Gwen.

Gwen sighs again, but it's not as annoyed as the last time she did it. "It's okay, dweeb," she says, "I know you're hopeless without me."

"Yeah," Ben says, "I am."

* * *

He doesn't stop having the weird dreams. Most of the time, it's just stupid stuff he learns to ignore as he gets older, but sometimes it sticks with him when he wakes up. Sometimes it's about aliens he's never seen before and fights he's not sure he's ever going to have, and when that happens, he does what he always does.

"What was it this time?" Gwen asks in his ear.

Ben settles down into his pillow and sighs. "Stupid dream," he offers, and Gwen sighs back at him through the phone, fond, and says, "Tell me, Ben."


End file.
